Forest field staff to send SOS to President, PM for reforms

Dept’s 3,500 employees will write letters to top leaders for competing tree project

LAHORE: Thousands of Punjab Forest Department field staff members will write letters to the president, Prime Minister Imran Khan and the chief minister of Punjab to resolve the legal and administrative issues hampering the completion of the 10 billion tree project.

The employees have announced that they will send the letters on June 25 to record protest.

As many as 3,500 field officials of the department, including foresters and forest guards, have announced the unique protest for departmental reforms. They will write joint letters to the authorities instead of traditional street protests.

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The Lahore General Secretary of the Punjab Foresters and Forest Guards Association, Javed Khan, said they had demanded through a letter to the prime minister the redefinition of the responsibilities of field employees by setting up protection and afforestation wings in the department. “They should be given the responsibility of forming a patrolling squad with modern facilities so that the forests can be protected from the timber and land mafia,” he said.

He said all the provinces have made changes in the forest laws as per their requirements, especially Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan have made significant changes over time but no significant work has been done in this regard in Punjab.

The increase in population and livestock has put tremendous pressure on forest resources but the forest department has not been provided any facility, nor have the necessary changes been made in the law and regulations. One guard is responsible for the protection of forests over hundreds of acres round the clock and he is supposed to constantly patrol the area.

Under the PEEDA Act 2006, forest guards reporting damage have been instructed to seek compensation from the accused but influential defendants threaten them they face a deduction from their salary in case of failure to make the offenders pay for the losses caused by them.

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Javed Khan said the field staff wanted inclusion of sections 392 and 395, of robbery, instead of sections 379 and 411 in the complaints, disallowing timber thieves bail for six months and registration of forest officers’ applications by the police.

“The total number of field employees of Punjab Forest Department is about 3,500, which is not even equal to the strength of the police of a district,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 22^nd, 2020.